Worth the wait!
Leafs stun Caps in double- OT thriller to tie series that deserves to go long
Double-overtime hero Kasperi Kapanen celebrates his first of two goals in Saturday night’s thrilling 4-3 win over the Capitals in Washington.
There were stretches of hockey where you thought, you know, the Toronto Maple Leafs could win this series. You don’t think they will, not yet, because mistakes pop up and the bodies are falling away and the Washington Capitals are a good team with a usually-great goalie. Winning a series is a mountain that’s still off in the distance, waiting to be climbed.
But there are stretches where you thought, with some goaltending and a little luck Goliath could come tumbling down, or at least be made to be afraid. Toronto’s defencemen continued to get injured, and the Leafs had given up a third-period lead. They were in this game, though, and they could have ended it in the third, in the first overtime, in the second overtime, before it ended. By the time it ended, even the kids were playoff veterans. Congratulations, guys.
When it did end, though, it was a kid who played in the AHL all season who ended it, on a feed from the veteran of the bunch. Brian Boyle with a clever backhand pass to Kasperi Kapanen at 11:53 of the second OT, and the Leafs won Game 2 — 4-3 — and head back to Toronto with the series tied 1-1. It was Kapanen’s second goal of the night. What a game.
Two games against the league’s best team in a thundering rink with bells ringing like it was a damned downhill ski race, with nine players in the playoffs for the first time, down to four defencemen — one of whom had played, when healthy, five games in two months — and it came down to sudden death both times. They held the lead going into the third despite losing defenceman Roman Polak to a gruesome leg injury, and despite giving up two power-play goals. They held the lead despite spending the first 11 minutes without getting a shot on goal. At the beginning of the game, the Leafs were being stuffed in a locker.
But some time in the first period it was like they turned a key, and the gates opened. The Capitals were getting chances too, because the game was a Fast and Furious car race all of a sudden, and here’s the thing: when you get right down to it, that is Toronto’s natural state of being. In their hearts of hearts, they have wanted to be that team all year — that swashbuckling team, that team full of young Musketeers.
Washington doesn’t want to play like that. For all their skill, the Capitals have been trying to become A Playoff Team since the great first-round shock of 2010 against Montreal. They tried Dale Hunter and Adam Oates and now Barry Trotz, all in the service of harnessing the run and gun Caps.
They don’t want to play like that. The Leafs? Mike Babcock wants them to play like Team Canada, all puck control and risk management and skill at the other end, but it’s also like Babcock said after Game 1: “I kept trying to tell them — we’ve got good players, we’re allowed to play at a high level. We’ve got some really good players. Play ... You don’t have to watch ’em. You can play good.”
At five-on-five, skating like that at that pace, the Leafs could play. Jake Gardiner created a shot for van Riemsdyk, who went top shelf.
Even after the Capitals took a 2-1 lead on those power-play goals, the Leafs kept coming.
Kapanen tied it on a fourth-line shift, and Morgan Rielly flipped a wrist shot that found a knothole high in the fence on a period-ending power play, and it was 3-2 Leafs going into the third.
And then they had to be that team that got the puck out of their end and out of danger, the one Babcock has been barking on about for seven months. Babcock has spent the year trying to shape them into a team that can get the puck the hell out of their zone so they can go play the fun end of the game.
Yes, the Capitals tied it on a shift that lasted over a minute, and that was ended on a ricochet that landed on Nicklas Backstrom’s stick. But the Leafs could have won it in regulation before that, and after. Brian Boyle on a deflection, JVR off a forecheck, Matthews in the clear, except the puck slid under his stick. They all probably saw the game on their sticks, in those moments.
Alex Ovechkin bounced one off the inside of Frederik Andersen’s pads and wide, too. But it was overtime, instead and Ovechkin was stopped at the end of OT. Onwards.
Before the game, Capitals forward Justin Williams — the winningest player on the roster, Mr. Game 7, with three Stanley Cup rings — whether you can sense a playoff opponent wearing down, as a series goes on.
“Sometimes you can,” he said. “That’s the main goal. The main goal of winning a playoff series is making it too hard for the other team, having them realize, ‘You know what, this is too hard,’ and then you have it won.
“We expect a long series every time we come into one, and this one is certainly no different and it’s going to be a grind.”
This series isn’t over, and it deserves to be long. Let’s see whether it will be.